RunningMn9 wrote:I really don't like seeing my name in red every third post like that.

Red was kind of nonchalant. Green is just overwhelming and blinding. Thanx a lot.

I'm in Pro-Silver and my eyes slip right by the green. Red was in my face every time I saw one of his posts. I could see the opposite being the case for the Black and Gold theme.

I'm the default, which I suppose is pro silver but it's really baby blue. My eyes just process differently I guess. That red just blends, like rust in dirt. That green is highlighter day glow green, designed to call my attention to it so I can be repulsed by its intensity.

The US is set to start testing of a new generation of GPS satellites with the first of the Block III GPS satellites showing up in Colorado for its first tests in an extensive series to ensure that the tech will work.
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The new generation of satellites is said to be much more powerful allowing the devices to get readings when they previously could not. The new-generation satellite also uses a common band that is shared with other countries so GPS devices can work wherever you are.

The best part though is that the new satellites have better accuracy than older versions. The new satellites have the ability to determine your location within roughly one meter whereas the older satellites needed had a range of about ten feet. This is the first satellite in the US upgrade plans. The new satellites also have military uses with signals that are harder to block. This satellite will not be used in space. The first satellite of the Block III units to go into orbit will not be delivered until May of 2014.

I love it when tech articles say something like "The new satellites have the ability to determine your location within roughly one meter".

The satellites don't determine your location, they simply broadcast their own locations. Your receiver determines how long each signal took to reach it from a number of satellites, then uses the broadcast satellite locations to triangulate its own position.

The GPS III SVs simply have better clocks and better timekeeping systems to get more accurate signals to your receiver.

Also, the common band signal is only useful to you if you have receivers equipped to use it. Most commercial receivers (Garmin, Tom Tom, etc) only handle the L1 C/A GPS signals.

The US is set to start testing of a new generation of GPS satellites with the first of the Block III GPS satellites showing up in Colorado for its first tests in an extensive series to ensure that the tech will work.
...
The new generation of satellites is said to be much more powerful allowing the devices to get readings when they previously could not. The new-generation satellite also uses a common band that is shared with other countries so GPS devices can work wherever you are.

The best part though is that the new satellites have better accuracy than older versions. The new satellites have the ability to determine your location within roughly one meter whereas the older satellites needed had a range of about ten feet. This is the first satellite in the US upgrade plans. The new satellites also have military uses with signals that are harder to block. This satellite will not be used in space. The first satellite of the Block III units to go into orbit will not be delivered until May of 2014.

Scientists at Porton Down and the National Physical Laboratory believe they are three to five years away from developing a “quantum compass” that would be able to locate itself based on the subatomic effects of the earth’s magnetic field.

The technology, which would have no need for satellites or fixed points of reference such as radio masts, is of military interest around the world, because of the limitations of space-based navigation systems.

My blog (mostly photos): Fort Ephemera - My Flickr Photostream
“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn’t waste either.” ―Galen Rowell

I would be very interested in how they plan to compensate for variations in the earth's magnetic field. If massive earthquakes shift land enough to impact the length of the day, one has to imagine that the magnetic fields aren't exactly static. It's not like the poles flip or anything.

The Air Force's GPS 2F-7 is set to launch to space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 11:23 p.m. EDT (0323 Aug. 2 GMT) on Friday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The new satellite will help to further bolster the Air Force's Global Positioning Satellite network, used by civilians and military personnel around the world to map their locations, time and velocity.
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This launch will mark the third GPS satellite launch this year, and it is the seventh in a series of 12 satellites, according to Air Force officials.
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The $245 million GPS 2F-7 will join six GPS 2-As, 12 GPS 2-Rs, 7 GPS 2-RMs and the six other GPS 2-F satellites already orbiting Earth.

Lockheed Martin Corp. is likely to face competition from Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. for billions of dollars in contracts to build as many as 22 improved GPS satellites, according to a top U.S. Air Force procurement official.

The Pentagon approved an Air Force proposal for competition in part because Lockheed fell behind in completing the first of as many as eight of the GPS III satellites under a contract it won in 2008. Lockheed is about 28 months late in delivering the first satellite because of flaws in the satellite’s navigation payload system, produced by a subcontractor, that the company and the military say are now corrected.
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Lockheed, the biggest U.S. government contractor, now plans to deliver the first GPS III satellite under contract in August 2016, provided that corrections to deficiencies in its navigation payload pass testing in a vacuum test chamber that replicates space. The Air Force hasn’t yet executed an option for a ninth and 10th satellite.
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While the Air Force didn’t provide a cost estimate for the 22 GPS III satellites that may be awarded through competition, the service said in a statement that the eventual inventory of 32 satellites will be valued at about $7.6 billion.

Lockheed beat Boeing in May 2008 for the initial $1.46 billion contract.
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The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report last month that in addition to the delay in delivery, the date when the GPS III will be ready to launch has fallen even further behind to May 2017, or about three years later than planned.

Because of the delays, Lockheed so far has lost $164 million in fees out of a pool of $437 million provided as incentives and awards for performance, according to Air Force data.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has decided to skip the bidding competition for launch of the next generation U.S. Air Force GPS military navigation satellites, a company spokesperson confirmed to Universe Today, meaning that rival SpaceX is set to win its first military launch contract as the only other certified contract contender.
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Until May of this year, ULA had a near sole source contract with the USAF to launch the nation’s most critical and highly valuable national security satellites, until new space upstart SpaceX was also certified by the Air Force to launch our most sensitive military payloads with their Falcon 9 booster.

“ULA wants nothing more than to compete, but unfortunately we are unable to submit a compliant bid for GPS III-X launch services,” ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye told Universe Today.

ULA cited the lack of availability of “any Atlas engines available to bid” and other contract factors as the reason for not submitting a launch bid for the global positioning satellite, said Rye in the new ULA statement.

The U.S. Congress enacted a ban severely curtailing importation of the Russian-made RD-180 engines that power the Atlas first stage, after Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea in the spring of 2014 raised the ire of many members of Congress.

The U.S. Congress enacted a ban severely curtailing importation of the Russian-made RD-180 engines that power the Atlas first stage, after Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea in the spring of 2014 raised the ire of many members of Congress.

Only the US Congress would impose a ban on something our own military needed.

The U.S. Congress enacted a ban severely curtailing importation of the Russian-made RD-180 engines that power the Atlas first stage, after Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea in the spring of 2014 raised the ire of many members of Congress.

Only the US Congress would impose a ban on something our own military needed.

I'm actually very excited that the first launch of my satellite might be on a Falcon rocket.

Starting [yesterday], it appears the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say “appears” because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the US Navy’s largest installation in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won’t tell us much about what’s going on.

The FAA issued an advisory warning pilots on Saturday that global positioning systems (GPS) could be unreliable during six different days this month, primarily in the Southwestern United States. On June 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, and 30th the GPS interference testing will be taking place between 9:30am and 3:30pm Pacific time. But if you’re on the ground, you probably won’t notice interference.

The testing will be centered on China Lake, California—home to the Navy’s 1.1 million acre Naval Air Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. The potentially lost signals will stretch hundreds of miles in each direction and will affect various types of GPS, reaching the furthest at higher altitudes. But the jamming will only affect aircraft above 50 feet. As you can see from the FAA map below, the jamming will almost reach the California-Oregon border at 4o,000 feet above sea level and 505 nautical miles at its greatest range.

Botched testing by a Lockheed Martin Corp. subcontractor on a key component for the U.S.’s newest Global Positioning System satellites raises new questions about the No. 1 defense contractor’s supervision of the project, according to a top Air Force official.

The mistake by subcontractor Harris Corp. forced another delay in the delivery of the first of 32 planned GPS III satellites until later this month, according to Major General Roger Teague, the Air Force’s chief of space programs. That will make the $528 million satellite 34 months late, according to service data.

Lockheed has a contract to build the first 10 of the satellites designed to provide a more accurate version of the Global Positioning System used for everything from the military’s targeting of terrorists to turn-by-turn directions for civilians’ smartphones. The program’s latest setback may affect a pending Air Force decision on whether to open the final 22 satellites to competition from Lockheed rivals Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp.
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The parts in question are ceramic capacitors that have bedeviled the satellite project. They take higher-voltage power from the satellite’s power system and reduce it to a voltage required for a particular subsystem.

Last year, the Air Force and contractors discovered that Harris hadn’t conducted tests on the components, including how long they would operate without failing, that should have been completed in 2010.

Now, the Air Force says it found that Harris spent June to October of last year doing follow-up testing on the wrong parts instead of samples of the suspect capacitors installed on the first three satellites. Harris “immediately notified Lockheed and the government” after a post-test inspection, Teague said in his message.

Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said in an e-mail said that testing of the capacitors’ design was successfully completed in December.
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Harris spokeswoman Ellen Mitchell said in an e-mail that company personnel last year identified a capacitor “that was not subjected to all required qualification tests. Once the issue was discovered, Harris deployed a team dedicated to complete the required capacitor tests. The capacitor qualification testing was successfully completed in December 2016.”

But Teague said in an interview that Harris was required to perform not only a test to show that the part met design specifications but a separate one to assess the component’s reliability and whether it met a requirement to last 15 years. That second test wasn’t accomplished because “they used the wrong test item,” he said.
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The Air Force has decided to accept the first satellite even if its capacitors may be flawed because removing them could delay the delivery until October and cost about $70 million, Teague wrote to the congressional staff. The Air Force is confident in the first satellite’s overall reliability based on 3,000 hours of cumulative testing, Teague said.

The Air Force will have to pay to replace the suspect capacitors on the second and third satellites. That’s because the satellites are being developed under cost-reimbursement-type contracts, which require the Pentagon to pay for cost increases, the service said.

In an Air Force list of priorities that lacked funding for this year, the service said it needed $100 million for GPS III “capacitor repair/replace.” Captain AnnMarie Annicelli, an Air Force spokeswoman, said the list represented potential expenditures on which final decisions had not been made.

Navigation systems including those found in commercial flights may be disrupted or jammed completely across the southwest U.S. over the next couple of weeks. That sounds pretty bad but do not be too alarmed, it’s not Red Dawn. It’s just the U.S. Air Force and its massive annual Red Flag war exercises based out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, as reported by The War Zone.

The Red Flag exercises started on Jan. 26 and are scheduled to continue until Feb. 16, meaning commercial flights that often utilize GPS systems in various flight procedures, including taking off and landing (no big deal), may encounter outages over the next couple of weeks.

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) warned that the training exercises would be conducted between 8 p.m. PST and 11 p.m. PST and could impact most of the southwest, according to Flying Magazine:
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Flights in the Los Angeles area have been warned to expect issues with navigation systems at any altitude, which means they will not be able to rely on certain navigation-based take-off and landing equipment and procedures. Las Vegas will see most of the direct impact from the exercises, with some flights potentially being re-routed away from LAS due to increased flight traffic in the area.

Don't look now, but there's another Y2K-like computer-calendar problem on the way, and this one arrives in just one month: April 6, 2019.

That's the day millions of GPS receivers will literally run out of time, rolling over their time counters back to zero, thanks to limitations in timekeeping for older GPS devices. Many navigation systems may be affected, such as on ships or older aircraft, although your smartphone will be fine.
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"I'm not going to be flying on April 6," said one information-security expert during a presentation at the RSA 2019 security conference in San Francisco this week.
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To be fair, this has happened once before, on Aug. 21, 1999, and planes didn't start crashing then. But today, we're much more dependent on GPS to time everything that happens on Earth down to the last nanosecond.
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Governments and GPS device makers do know about this and have quietly been trying to get everything patched. The Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum in April 2018 warning "federal, state, local, and private sector organizations" to check with the manufacturers of their GPS devices and/or to update the firmware of their GPS devices before April 6. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has issued a similar memo.
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"The last time this happened (1,024 weeks ago), there was very little disruption, so although many of the receivers in use today weren't around then, there shouldn't be many problems," Milner told us. "That includes aviation-grade receivers."

"This comes from talking to a few of the GPS security people I know, including real alarmists when it comes to GPS spoofing," he added.
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The problem lies in the way GPS devices and satellites calculate time. Starting with the date of January 6, 1980, GPS devices count weeks, and the counting was originally contained in a 10-bit number field in the GPS device software. Two to the tenth power is 1,024, meaning that all GPS devices can count up to about 19.7 years -- Aug. 21, 1999 when calculated from January 1980.
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There's a bit more to worry about. Over the past 20 years, many individual GPS device and receiving-system manufacturers have restarted the clock on their own, usually to compensate for a device-specific error, and they could encounter time-rollover problems at any given in the next 20 years.

"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow